The Benefits Of Breastfeeding, 2014 Liberty University
The Benefits Of Breastfeeding, Avery Kordus
Senior Honors Theses
Breastfeeding research is plentiful, and the majority of the literature shows that breast milk is the superior form of infant nutrition except in the rare circumstances of infant metabolic disorders, maternal drug use, or positive HIV status. In comparison to formula, breast milk provides improved cognition, development, behavior, bonding, nutrition, digestion, immunity, and long-term health with fewer diseases and conditions in infants. Mothers are benefited by breastfeeding through bonding, faster weight loss, and reduction in certain cancers and conditions. Breast milk contains the proper amount of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals, and is also specialized for each infant and …
Methods For Integrative Analysis Of Genomic Data, 2014 Virginia Commonwealth University
Methods For Integrative Analysis Of Genomic Data, Paul Manser
Theses and Dissertations
In recent years, the development of new genomic technologies has allowed for the investigation of many regulatory epigenetic marks besides expression levels, on a genome-wide scale. As the price for these technologies continues to decrease, study sizes will not only increase, but several different assays are beginning to be used for the same samples. It is therefore desirable to develop statistical methods to integrate multiple data types that can handle the increased computational burden of incorporating large data sets. Furthermore, it is important to develop sound quality control and normalization methods as technical errors can compound when integrating multiple genomic …
Effects Of Polychlorinated Biphenyl (Pcb) On Response Perseveration And Ultrasonic Vocalization Emission In Rat During Development, 2013 Bowling Green State University
Effects Of Polychlorinated Biphenyl (Pcb) On Response Perseveration And Ultrasonic Vocalization Emission In Rat During Development, Howard Cromwell
Howard Casey Cromwell
The 3 major symptoms of autistic spectrum disorders include 1) social behavioral alterations, 2) problems in communication and 3) higher-order motoric deficits of perseveration and stereotyped movements. Previous work has shown that early developmental exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) alters rat pup social motivation and juvenile rat social recognition/investigation. The present work extends this previous research by examining how perinatal PCB exposure alters motoric functions and communication abilities at different stages of development. Action perseveration was examined using performance measures from a T-maze environment. Communication abilities were evaluated by monitoring ultrasound emission in rat pups during a brief isolation from …
Developmental And Molecular Functions Of Plakophilin-3, 2013 The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston
Developmental And Molecular Functions Of Plakophilin-3, William A. Munoz
Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)
Plakophilin-3, the less studied member of the plakophilin-catenin subfamily, and the larger catenin family, binds directly to desmosomal cadherin cytoplasmic domains and enhances desmosome formation and stability. In mammals, plakophilin-3 is expressed at the highest levels in desmosome-enriched tissues such as epithelia, with the knock-out in mice producing corresponding reductions in ectodermal integrity. In tissue, cellular and intracellular contexts where plakophilin-3 is not at the desmosomal plaque, little is known about its functions in the cytoplasm or nucleus, where it also localizes.
My work employed embryos of the amphibian, Xenopus laevis, to examine plakophilin-3’s developmental roles. I first evaluated …
Social Compass Curriculum: Three Descriptive Case Studies Of Social Skills Outcomes For Students With Autism, 2013 Chapman University
Social Compass Curriculum: Three Descriptive Case Studies Of Social Skills Outcomes For Students With Autism, Louanne E. Boyd, Deborah M. Ward
Engineering Faculty Articles and Research
The Social Compass Curriculum (SCC) was investigated for its effectiveness in improving core social skills in three descriptive case studies of students with autism. Treatment fidelity of the SCC was also measured in the school setting. The Social Responsiveness Scale and the Autism Social Skills Profile were completed by parents to measure pre- and postintervention social skills for three students aged 8 to 11 years who participated in the present multisite pilot study. Fidelity of implementation data were collected via a checklist during observations for three educators who implemented the intervention. Results indicate that the SCC improved core social deficits …
Behavioral, Biochemical, And Molecular Indices Of Stress Are Enhanced In Female Versus Male Rats Experiencing Nicotine Withdrawal, 2013 University of Texas at El Paso
Behavioral, Biochemical, And Molecular Indices Of Stress Are Enhanced In Female Versus Male Rats Experiencing Nicotine Withdrawal, Laura O'Dell
Laura Elena O'Dell
Stress is a major factor that promotes tobacco use and relapse during withdrawal. Although women are more vulnerable to tobacco use than men, the manner in which stress contributes to tobacco use in women versus men is unclear.Thus, the goal of this study was to compare behavioral and biological indices of stress in male and female rats during nicotine withdrawal. Since the effects of nicotine withdrawal are age-dependent, this study also included adolescent rats. An initial study was conducted to provide comparable nicotine doses across age and sex during nicotine exposure and withdrawal. Rats received sham surgery or an osmotic …
Magnetic Resonance Imaging Of Brain Tissue Abnormalities: Transverse Relaxation Time In Autism And Tourette Syndrome And Development Of A Novel Whole-Brain Myelin Mapping Technique, 2013 The University of Western Ontario
Magnetic Resonance Imaging Of Brain Tissue Abnormalities: Transverse Relaxation Time In Autism And Tourette Syndrome And Development Of A Novel Whole-Brain Myelin Mapping Technique, Yann Gagnon
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
The transverse relaxation time (T2) is a fundamental parameter of magnetic resonance imaging sensitive to tissue microstructure and water content, thus offering a non-invasive approach to evaluate abnormalities of brain tissue in-vivo. Prevailing hypotheses of two childhood psychiatric disorders were tested using quantitative T2 imaging and automated region of interest (ROI) analyses. In autism, the under-connectivity theory, which proposes aberrant connectivity within white matter (WM) was assessed, finding T2 to be eleveted in the frontal and parietal lobes, while dividing whole brain data into neurodevelopmentally relevant WM ROIs found increased T2 in bridging and radiate WM. In Tourette syndrome, tissue …
Loss Of Dendritic Inhibition In The Hippocampus After Repeated Early-Life Hyperthermic Seizures In Rats., 2013 Western University
Loss Of Dendritic Inhibition In The Hippocampus After Repeated Early-Life Hyperthermic Seizures In Rats., Richard Boyce, L Stan Leung
Physiology and Pharmacology Publications
Seizures are relatively common in children and are a risk factor for subsequent temporal lobe epilepsy. To investigate whether early-life seizures themselves are detrimental to the proper function of the adult brain, we studied whether dendritic excitation and inhibition in the hippocampus of adult rats were altered after hyperthermia-induced seizures in immature rats. In particular, we hypothesized that apical dendritic inhibition in hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells would be disrupted following hyperthermia-induced seizures in early life. Seizure rats were given three hyperthermia-induced seizures per day for three days from postnatal day (PND) 13 to 15; control rats were handled similarly but …
Impairment Of Trkb-Psd-95 Signaling In Angelman Syndrome, 2013 Brown University
Impairment Of Trkb-Psd-95 Signaling In Angelman Syndrome, Cong Cao, Mengia S. Rioult-Pedotti, Paolo Migani, Crystal J. Yu, Rakesh Tiwari, Keykavous Parang, Mark R. Spaller, Dennis J. Goebel, John Marshall
Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research
Angelman syndrome (AS) is a neurodevelopment disorder characterized by severe cognitive impairment and a high rate of autism. AS is caused by disrupted neuronal expression of the maternally inherited Ube3A ubiquitin protein ligase, required for the proteasomal degradation of proteins implicated in synaptic plasticity, such as the activity-regulated cytoskeletal-associated protein (Arc/Arg3.1). Mice deficient in maternal Ube3A express elevated levels of Arc in response to synaptic activity, which coincides with severely impaired long-term potentiation (LTP) in the hippocampus and deficits in learning behaviors. In this study, we sought to test whether elevated levels of Arc interfere with brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) …
Pleiotropic And Isoform-Specific Functions For Pitx2 In Superior Colliculus And Hypothalamic Neuronal Development, 2012 Aurora Research Institute
Pleiotropic And Isoform-Specific Functions For Pitx2 In Superior Colliculus And Hypothalamic Neuronal Development, Mindy Waite
Mindy Waite
Retinal Ganglion Cell Differentiation And Transplantation, 2012 Neuroscience Program
Retinal Ganglion Cell Differentiation And Transplantation, Jonathan Hertz
Jonathan Hertz
Adult central nervous system (CNS) neurons fail to regenerate following injury, and there is no repair or replacement of cells lost after injury or in neurodegenerative diseases. There is much interest in transplanting stem cell-derived neurons into the injured nervous system and enhancing the differentiation of donor cells into mature, integrated and functional neurons. Little is known, however, about what signals control the differentiation and integration of neurons, either during development or in the adult. Generating appropriate types of donor neurons from stem cells has been challenging because the signals that regulate neural subtype-specific fates are largely unknown. Therefore, it …
Brain Function Differences In Language Processing In Children And Adults With Autism, 2012 Carnegie Mellon University
Brain Function Differences In Language Processing In Children And Adults With Autism, Diane L. Williams, Vladimir L. Cherkassky, Robert A. Mason, Timothy A. Keller, Nancy J. Minshew, Marcel Adam Just
Marcel Adam Just
No abstract provided.
Brain Activity Of Normal And Low Iq Children: The Neural Efficiency Hypothesi, 2012 RANI
Brain Activity Of Normal And Low Iq Children: The Neural Efficiency Hypothesi, Fabio T. Rocha, Armando F. Rocha, Sueli Angeloti
Armando F Rocha
The neural efficiency hypothesis (NEH) of intelligence claims that subjects performing a complex task may well use a limited number of brain circuits and/or fewer neurons while poor performers use more circuits and/or neurons, some of which are inessential or detrimental to task performance. The present paper studies the EEG activity associated with reading and arithmetic calculation by normal and mental retarded children. Correlation analysis of the electrical activity recorded by 10/20 electrode system was used to calculate the amount of information allocated by individuals to solve these tasks. Multiple regression analyses showed that IQ linearly correlates with the amount …
Substituting The Senses, 2012 University of Edinburgh
Substituting The Senses, Mirko Farina, Julian Kiverstein, Andy Clark
Mirko Farina
Sensory substitution devices are a type of sensory prosthesis that (typically) convert visual stimuli transduced by a camera into tactile or auditory stimulation. They are designed to be used by people with impaired vision so that they can recover some of the functions normally subserved by vision. In this chapter we will consider what philosophers might learn about the nature of the senses from the neuroscience of sensory substitution. We will show how sensory substitution devices work by exploiting the cross-modal plasticity of sensory cortex: the ability of sensory cortex to pick up some types of information about the external …
Effects Of Neonatal Hypoxic Ischemic Brain Injury On Spatial Working Memory, 2012 University of Connecticut
Effects Of Neonatal Hypoxic Ischemic Brain Injury On Spatial Working Memory, Amanda L. Smith
Master's Theses
Children born prematurely or at very low birth weight (VLBW) have an increased risk for hypoxic ischemic brain injury (HI). HI refers to a lack of adequate blood and oxygen flow in the brain. HI can also occur in the term infant due to birth complications such as prolonged labor, placental dysfunction, or cord prolapse. In both populations (though exact patterns of neuropathology vary) brain damage is likely to occur in the form of decreased hippocampal and cortical volume, and enlargement of the ventricles (Kesler et al., 2004, Nagy et al., 2009). Resulting neuropathology can in turn lead to cognitive …
Brief Embryonic Strychnine Exposure In Zebrafish Causes Long-Term Adult Behavioral Impairment With Indications Of Embyronic Synaptic Changes, 2012 Sacred Heart University
Brief Embryonic Strychnine Exposure In Zebrafish Causes Long-Term Adult Behavioral Impairment With Indications Of Embyronic Synaptic Changes, Nicole M. Roy, Brianna Arpie, Joseph Lugo, Elwood Linney, Edward D. Levin, Daniel Cerutti
Biology Faculty Publications
Zebrafish provide a powerful model of the impacts of embryonic toxicant exposure on neural development that may result in long-term behavioral dysfunction. In this study, zebrafish embryos were treated with 1.5mM strychnine for short embryonic time windows to induce transient changes in inhibitory neural signaling, and were subsequently raised in untreated water until adulthood. PCR analysis showed indications that strychnine exposure altered expression of some genes related to glycinergic, GABAergic and glutamatergic neuronal synapses during embryonic development. In adulthood, treated fish showed significant changes in swimming speed and tank diving behavior compared to controls. Taken together, these data show that …
Diffusion Barriers Of The Lateral Ventricular System, 2012 University of Connecticut
Diffusion Barriers Of The Lateral Ventricular System, Anitha Saravanakumar
Master's Theses
Adult neurogenesis in mammalian brain has become a well-accepted phenomenon. The neural stem cells in the sub ventricular zone (SVZ) along the lateral wall of the lateral ventricle, the largest germinal center of adult neurogenesis, are maintained by the neural stem cell niche. One prominent feature of the niche is its close proximity to the cerebral spinal fluid (CSF). The role of micromolecules (such as ions, water and gases) present in the CSF and diffusing through the lateral ventricular wall and how the stem cell micro-environment is maintained is poorly understood. The cytoarchitecture of the lateral ventricular wall with a …
Autism Spectrum Disorders In Hispanics And Non-Hispanics, 2012 University of California, Davis
Autism Spectrum Disorders In Hispanics And Non-Hispanics, Virginia Chaidez, Robin L. Hansen, Irva Hertz-Picciotto
Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences: Faculty Publications
Objectives: To compare differences in autism between Hispanics and non-Hispanics. We also examined the relationship between multiple language exposure and language function and scores of children. Methods: The Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment (CHARGE) study is an ongoing population-based case-control study with children sampled (n = 1061) from three strata: those with autism (AU) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD); developmental delay (DD); or the general population (GP). Results: Non-Hispanic cases demonstrated higher cognitive composite scores for the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL). There were significant associations between multiple language exposure and MSEL subscales for receptive …
Effect Of Nicotine On Body Composition, 2012 University of Texas at El Paso
Effect Of Nicotine On Body Composition, Laura O'Dell
Laura Elena O'Dell
No abstract provided.
The Effects Of Prenatal Exposure To Altered Melatonin Levels On Hippocampal Gene Expression In The Male Rat, 2012 Bucknell University
The Effects Of Prenatal Exposure To Altered Melatonin Levels On Hippocampal Gene Expression In The Male Rat, Anna Uehara
Honors Theses
The stability of the circadian rhythm for mammals depends on the levels of serotonin and melatonin, neurohormones that signal for lightness and darkness, respectively. Disruption in the stability of neurohormones has been shown to be a critical factor in psychopathological disorders in humans. For example, altering levels of melatonin in utero through administration of melatonin or the melatonin receptor antagonist, luzindole, has been shown to cause changes in developmental growth and adult behavior in the male rat. Analysis of relative adult hippocampal gene expression with RT-PCR revealed differences in ARNTL expression that suggested abnormality in clock gene expression of the …